Proper Names As Cultural Referents in British Chick Lit: a Corpus-Based Analysis of Their Translations Into Spanish and Italian
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Proper Names as Cultural Referents in British Chick Lit: A corpus-based analysis of their translations into Spanish and Italian Laura Cantora Tuñón Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Modern Languages and Cultures October 2013 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Assertion of moral rights: The right of Laura Cantora Tuñón to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2013 The University of Leeds and Laura Cantora Tuñón ii Acknowledgments First and most importantly I would like to express my most heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor Professor Jeremy Munday for all his encouragement, support, advice and patience during these years in which he help me grow from a student into a researcher. It has been an honour working with him. I am also grateful to his family for so openly and warmly welcoming me, and my family, into their home and lives. Professor Anthony Hartley’s input during the early stages of this project is also greatly appreciated. As is the assistance with the technology offered by Dr Bogdan Babych and other colleagues at the Centre for Translation Studies of the University of Leeds. I am most grateful. I would also like to mention Dr Carmen Cuéllar Lázaro, from Valladolid University in Spain, for introducing me to this fascinating world of translated proper names. The warmest thank you goes to my father, sister and all my family in Spain for always believing in me. To my Godmother, Ana, and my best friend, María José, for being by my side at every step of the way, smiling at all the highs and hugging at all the lows. To my little Arwen, for being the most wonderful thing ever. And lastly, the biggest thank you to my Grant, for all the insightful conversations; because I could not have arrived to this point without his love, belief and commitment. This Thesis is dedicated to the memory of my Mother iii Abstract This thesis considers the role that proper names play in British mass market women’s fiction (genre generally known as Chick Lit) by means of an analysis of the way in which those proper names have been translated into Spanish and Italian. The relationship between source text and target text is explored in terms of the procedures employed to translate each proper name. Our main hypothesis is that Toury’s (1995) law of growing standardization would prevail in the translated text in an attempt to bring the connotations and foreign elements of the source language text nearer to the target language readership. This hypothesis is tested by creating a parallel trilingual corpus containing three novels in their original English versions as well as their translations into Spanish and Italian. Using corpus processing tools, such as named-entity recognition programs and trilingual concordancers, a total of 1500 distinct proper names are extracted from these texts which means that 3000 translation instances are available for analysis. These names are categorised using a novel faceted taxonomy, and the translations are classified using a purpose-built map of translation procedures. These categorisations are then analysed using corpus processing measurements such as raw and relative frequency to detect any possible patterns in the translation of proper names in modern literature. The research shows that translators attempt to identify an ‘equilibrium’ between conserving certain elements and explaining others; while attempting to bring the connotations and foreign elements closer to the target language culture a wide variety of procedures are used. The data also reveals a more marked tendency to conserve the proper names in their original form in the Spanish target texts than in the Italian target texts, where there is more variation in the range of procedures employed. In addition to these results, a major contribution to knowledge of this research is the creation and successful application of the taxonomy and map of procedures and the processes devised for the analysis which are now available to be used in other investigations. Keywords: proper name, corpus-based translation studies, translation procedure, norms and laws of translation. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................. iii Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... x List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... xi List of Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. xii Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 13 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 13 2. Hypothesis .................................................................................................................. 14 3. Methodology ............................................................................................................... 15 4. Research Questions ................................................................................................... 17 5. Aims and Objectives .................................................................................................. 18 5.1 Concrete Outputs ................................................................................................ 18 6. Thesis Structure ......................................................................................................... 19 6.1 Arrangement of Chapters ...................................................................................... 21 7. Contribution to knowledge ....................................................................................... 26 Chapter 1. Theoretical Framework ..................................................................................... 28 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 28 1.2 Holmes’ Map ................................................................................................................ 28 1.3 Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies methodology and concepts .................. 30 1.4 The quest for Translation Universals ....................................................................... 34 1.4.1 Corpus Based Translation Studies (CBTS) ....................................................... 36 1.5 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 41 Chapter 2. In Search of a Definition of Proper Name ...................................................... 43 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 43 2.2 Linguistic approach to describing proper names. .................................................. 44 2.2 Philosophical approach to the meaning of proper names. ................................... 46 2.4 A definition of Proper Name ...................................................................................... 55 2.5 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 56 Chapter 3. Proper Names and Translation ........................................................................ 57 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 57 3.2 Arguments against the translation of proper names ............................................. 58 3.3 Arguments in favour of the translation of proper names ..................................... 61 3.4 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 71 v Chapter 4. Translation Procedures and Proper Names .................................................... 73 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 73 4.2 Vinay and Darbelnet and the rise in empirical research into translation procedures .......................................................................................................................... 75 4.3 Translation procedures for culture-bound elements ............................................. 77 4.3.1 Newmark (1988) .................................................................................................. 78 4.3.2 Hermans (1988)..................................................................................................